Ashley Billasano kept the pain locked inside her for years, allowing only a handful of people closest to her to have a glimpse. On Monday, the 18-year-old Rosenberg high school student let it all out in a torrent of messages on Twitter – the sexual abuse that she said ruined what should have been some of the best years of her life, her inability to see justice done on her behalf. Then she killed herself.

Friends say the suffering and depressed Billasano decided to make her death count for something even as her life became unbearable. Her burst of 144 tweets, which took place over six hours and ended shortly before she took her life through suffocation, recounted the sexual abuse at the hands of a family member and other adults, and the frustration that arose when authorities failed to bring charges.

Billasano’s mother, Tiffany Ruiz Leskinen, said her daughter confided the story of abuse to a teacher, who notified the police department in Pflugerville, where her school was located. The investigation led nowhere, Leskinen said.

“The detective told her that she had trouble believing her,” her mother said. “Here is someone who has been abused and is forced to be silent for so long. Then the one person you go to looking for help says they might not believe you. The CPS caseworker was a rookie right out of college. She did not know anything and kept saying she had check with her supervisor.”

“It was almost as if they were treating her like she was the one under investigation instead of her being the victim. She felt like they were really insensitive to what had gone on,” she said, referring to officials working the case. “They say that they did what they could to protect her, but they let her back into the home where she was abused.”

Billasano was not living with her mother at the time of her death.

However, Dayna Blazey, assistant district attorney at the Travis County district attorney’s office, defended authorities’ handling of the investigation. She told CNN’s Baldwin that she was not aware of anyone in her jurisdiction telling Billasano a criminal case was not being pursued.